Lasagna with yellow squash and smoked turkey sausage

Lasagna is arguably one of the greatest comfort foods invented. Who doesn’t like lasagna? Amber had given me a lasagna request like a month ago and I politely agreed yet continued onward with my seafood kick. Those requests became more adamant as time went on and here we are. This recipe is the product of a genuine comfort food craving.

One of my reasons for hesitating to make lasagna was my inner drive to recreate the dish in some unique fashion. It’s just what I do. I was stumped. How could I make lasagna unique, yet still satisfy the comfort food craving? These are the three unique ingredients that I used:

Smoked Mozzarella cheese
Smoke Turkey Sausage
Yellow Squash

I made my own red sauce for this lasagna but by all means you can simply buy it. If you have more time to spare then go for it. The yellow squash was so flavorful in this dish and the smoked turkey sausage complimented it perfectly. Any other sausage would have been too harsh and dominated the lasagna. The smoked mozzarella added the final blow to knock this dinner out of the park! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. This lasagna only lasted 2 days in our house and we wished we had more.

A final note: If you want less sauce in your lasagna its safe to cut 1 cup of sauce out. Just make sure to try to coat the no boil noodles as much as possible so they can become tender.

Dice up the smoked turkey sausage and brown in a skillet for 5 minutes. Add in the shitake mushrooms and cook for another 3 minutes.

Pour in 2 cups of red sauce to the sausage and mushrooms. Season with ½ tsp of kosher salt and ¼ tsp of pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil and then cover and let simmer for 10 minutes.

Rub the squash slices with olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill or fry them until they are browned and tender. About 3-4 minutes per side. Then set aside

Meanwhile, mix together the ricotta with chopped fresh basil and torn fresh oregano leaves. Also, stir in 1 cup of spinach. Add in the beaten egg.

Once the red sauce is finished, its time to assemble the lasagna. In a rectangular oven dish, place some red sauce to coat the bottom of the dish. Place sheets of no boil lasagna noodles on top. Then cover the noodles with more sauce. Add in a layer of the herb ricotta mixture and then top with sliced squash. On top of that add 1 cup of smoked mozzarella cheese. Add more lasagna noodles and repeat the process one more time.

I saw this via the kitchn, too, and just made two–one to freeze and one to make for a crowd tomorrow. I made some modifications according to what I could find at my local grocery store (no smoked turkey…sad day!) and I’m a teeny bit worried it might not be that great…but extra mozzarella covers a multitude of sins, right? 🙂

You can never go wrong with too much mozzarella! I hope it turns out for you though. At least in my experience, lasagna can be pretty forgiving.! 🙂 Don’t be too worried about the smoked turkey sausage as it added a modest flavor so it could easily be done without.